When Ruxton relocated to Britain the following year, he concealed all evidence of this marriage, although in 1928, he did contact his father-in-law, Jehangirji, requesting he immediately send him the sum of £200 via telegraphic transfer.

Although Ruxton failed his entrance examination, the General Medical Council authorised his practising medicine in the United Kingdom on the strength of the qualifications he had earlier obtained in Bombay.

While studying to become a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in Edinburgh, Ruxton became acquainted with a 26-year-old[13] woman named Isabella Van Ess,[14] who managed a café in the city.

[15] At the time of their acquaintance, Isabella was still legally married to a Dutchman whom she had wed in 1919,[16] but this marriage had only lasted a matter of weeks, and she had resumed using her maiden name of Kerr.

[18] Ruxton had made great efforts to assimilate himself into British society, and he quickly acquired a reputation among his patients as a diligent and compassionate general physician who was well-respected and popular within the community.

[26] It is unknown precisely when Ruxton began to accuse Isabella of adultery and assault her, although loud quarrels between the couple had resulted in police interventions on several occasions.

Upon her return to Dalton Square in the early hours of Sunday, 15 September, Ruxton's jealousy and paranoia apparently overwhelmed him, and he most likely strangled Isabella into submissiveness, unconsciousness, or death with his bare hands, before beating and stabbing her body.

Either to prevent their housemaid from discovering his crime or because she had actually witnessed the act, Ruxton extensively bludgeoned and either strangled or asphyxiated Mary Jane Rogerson; he probably also stabbed her body either before or after death.

Several hours later, at approximately 4.30 pm, Ruxton visited the home of one of his patients, a Mrs Hampshire, and asked both her and, shortly thereafter, her husband to return to Dalton Square with him to help him "prepare for the decorators", who were expected to arrive the following morning to perform work he claimed had been arranged several months previously.

As she would later testify at Ruxton's trial, all the carpeting had been removed from the stairs, and several sections of the flooring were littered with straw, which also protruded from beneath a locked bedroom door.

[5][n 5] On the morning of 29 September 1935 a young woman named Susan Haines Johnson[38] glanced over the parapet of an old stone bridge located 2 miles (3 km) north of the Dumfriesshire town of Moffat.

[39] Upon the banks of the stream—named Gardenholme Linn—which ran beneath the bridge, Johnson noticed a bundle wrapped in fabric that had lodged against a boulder, with a partially decomposed human arm protruding from the package.

[42] In addition to the extensive mutilation across both victims' entire bodies, which both Professor Glaister and Dr. Millar deduced had been entirely committed with a surgical knife[45] as opposed to either a saw or an axe,[44] the murderer had removed the eyes, ears, skin, lips, soft tissue, and several teeth from both heads to make identification via dental records or composite drawings impossible, with additional attention being devoted to areas of the body where possible distinguishing features such as operational scars or vaccinations may have been visible.

In addition, other packages opened to reveal two heads, one of which was wrapped in a child's rompers; a quantity of cotton wool and sections from the Daily Herald of 6 August 1935; two forearms with hands attached but minus the top joints of the fingers and thumbs; and several pieces of skin and flesh.

[48] The two bodies were transported to the Anatomy Department of the University of Edinburgh, where they were first treated with ether to prevent further decomposition and destroy all maggot infestation, then preserved in a formalin solution before being reconstructed prior to Professors Glaister, James Couper Brash, and Sydney Smith conducting their formal autopsies.

[61] As such, Inspector Jeremiah Lynch of Scotland Yard—who had been called in to assist the investigation at the request of the Chief Constable of Dumfriesshire[62]—focused his efforts on recent missing persons reports filed within this section of England on or shortly after 15 September.

[7] Five days before the discovery of the human remains in Moffat, Ruxton had visited Lancaster police, claiming his wife had "once again" deserted him; he had earlier visited the Morecambe household of the parents of the family maid, Mary Jane Rogerson, claiming their daughter, having recently engaged in an affair with a local youth,[65] had become pregnant and that his wife had agreed to discreetly take her away from their home to arrange an abortion.

[55] Mrs Rogerson was unable to identify the pair of child's rompers shown to her, but suggested the police should show the garment to a friend of hers named Edith Holme, who lived in Grange-over-Sands and with whom Isabella, Mary Jane, and the Ruxton children had briefly lodged earlier that year on a brief vacation to Morecambe Bay.

[6] Conversing with his Lancashire counterpart, the Chief Constable of Dumfriesshire discovered that Mary Jane's employer, Ruxton, had informally reported his wife missing the previous month, and that the final confirmed sightings of Isabella alive by anyone other than Ruxton himself had been on the evening of 14 September, when she had left her two sisters in Blackpool to return to her Lancaster home, having travelled to the seaside resort to view the Blackpool Illuminations.

Although Ruxton was placated by officers before being driven home, at this point he was considered the prime suspect in the murders by all law enforcement personnel thus far involved in the investigation.

Lancaster police had by this stage spoken to one of the Ruxtons' two charladies, Agnes Oxley, who confirmed to officers that on 15 September, Ruxton had arrived at her home and informed her that it was unnecessary for her to work at his premises until the following day, and that when she had arrived at 2 Dalton Square the following day, the house had been in a general state of shambles, with carpets removed, a pile of burned fabric-like material in the garden, and the bathtub extensively stained with a yellowish discolouration.

[n 9] When asked to account for his whereabouts between 14 and 29 September, Ruxton produced a handwritten document entitled 'My Movements', which he then passed to investigators before making a voluntary statement based on what he had written.

[73] Throughout the several hours of questioning, Lancaster police repeatedly conversed with their Scottish counterparts, who had previously visited Ruxton's household to remove objects such as sections of wallpaper, carpeting, skirting boards, and silverware for a more detailed forensic examination at Glasgow University.

In the early hours of 13 October, the finger and palm prints upon the second set of human hands discovered were found to be a match for impressions upon items Mary Jane Rogerson had habitually handled at Dalton Square.

For example, on one occasion, Birkett contended the blood found on the balustrade within 2 Dalton Square may have accidentally spilled there through either a birth, an abortion, or a woman's menstrual cycle occurring within the property.

[86] The trial of Buck Ruxton lasted eleven days, with the majority of the testimony delivered being from eyewitnesses and from medical and forensic experts who testified on behalf of the prosecution.

In his closing argument delivered on behalf of the prosecution, Joseph Cooksey Jackson summarised the testimony delivered by each of the medical and forensic experts regarding the painstaking identification of the victims, and how items used to conceal the remains could be traced to Dalton Square, including a section of luxury sheeting wrapped around several sections of the bodies that had been proven to precisely match the sheeting from the bed in the master bedroom at Dalton Square.

[n 12] Outlining the inconsistencies in the accounts Ruxton had given to numerous individuals as to the whereabouts of his wife and maid, Jackson reminded the jury of the eyewitness testimony delivered by numerous individuals who had earlier testified, before turning to Ruxton's exhaustive efforts to destroy evidence and pacify Mary Jane Rogerson's parents as to their daughter's whereabouts in the weeks between the murders and his arrest.

This address lasted for several hours, and in reference to all evidence and testimony which had been presented at the trial, Judge Singleton instructed the jury that Ruxton must be given the benefit of any reasonable doubt that may exist in their minds, adding: "If there is an avenue, let him walk down it to freedom, but if there is not, he cannot.

[93] When asked by Judge Singleton if he had anything to say in response to the verdict and sentence, Ruxton responded by stating, "I am very sorry", before politely thanking the court for its patience and the fairness of his trial.